The Sideways Man
by RoxieFlash
Summary: Her Thief has abandoned hope that Their Rose will ever return. She has not.
1. They Buried The Sun

He sat in knee-high knots of scarlet grass, fingers twining through the strands and pulling them up by the root. Their smell was bitter; like most things from this place, it was beautiful and seductive without, and foul within. With a snort of derision the last son of Gallifrey tossed the plant aside, but the bitter juice still clung to him, leaving the pads of his fingers stained bright red.

It was a dream. Anywhere, anywhen he saw this place, it was never anything more than a dream. He and the Moment had removed Gallifrey from all Time, and now, save for himself and a few other dusty relics, it might never have existed at all. He idealized this place in his mind, sometimes, but even as the ache of homesickness rose in his chest, the last Gallifreyan - the man known as the Doctor - reminded himself that for all his wishing, in the end all there had been was rot.

A wind swept across the hill where he sat, rushing through the silver leaves and carrying their chime out into the darkening auburn sky. The Doctor took a deep breath. The air was sweeter here than on any planet he'd ever known; it was the air he had been made to breathe. It ruffled his hair, swept through the grass, and swirled at the skirts of the little girl sitting at his feet.

She was beautiful, this little creature; not in the alluring way women were beautiful, not in the way - he swallowed hard - not in the way Rose had been, but in the way a collapsing star was beautiful. She was at once ancient and utterly young; a carefree spirit both dying and being born. Here, her pale, ancient eyes pinned him to the scarlet hills.

"Our Rose," her voice was a whisper. "Our Rose has gone."

Sometimes She took this form, in his dreams. He didn't know if it was actually Her, or just a construction he'd built in his mind so that he could look on his oldest friend with his eyes. He didn't speak. Didn't think he'd ever find his voice again, not in the deafening silence of Rose's absence. But he reached out in his muteness anyway, and found his hands enveloped in small white ones.

"Will you bring her home?"

A sudden memory assaulted him: Rose, frightened and suspicious and pressing herself against the far side of the console room, as far away from his new body as possible.

"Can you change back?"

Her palpable disappointment at his answer had hurt nearly as much as any physical wound, and if he'd had it in his power to ease back into his overlarge ears and Northern burr, he would have in an instant, but he'd been powerless. Now, what She asked of him was just as impossible as taking up an old body, and the sense of drifting helplessness returned. He was only one Time Lord, and one Time Lord could not breach the Void.

She knew that. So why did She ask?

His last memory, as he woke, was the sight of violent red smudges on the tiny pale hands covering his; his stains, becoming Hers.


	2. So I Carried The Torch

Timelines bend at Her Thief's will. Memory rushes and flows like sparkling golden water at his fingertips. He can see all that is, all that was, all that ever could be. But, unlike Her, he cannot see into other dimensions - and he cannot see into Their Rose's heart.

* * *

An office. They'd given her an office.

There was an antique mahoghany desk with a high-backed leather chair behind it, and three rows of matching filing cabinets. On top of the desk sat a gorgeous Tiffany lamp next to a brand-new computer and a shiny bronze nameplate that read: ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: REQUISITIONS beneath her name. To the left, there were several neat rows of the bits and bobs that go with running an office: a fresh, clean stack of manila folders, a block of post-it notes, and two small dishes containing paper clips and a heap of brightly-colored pushpins. There was an empty corkboard on one wall, and on the opposite a huge, curtainless window overlooking Canary Wharf.

Rose hated it immediately.

"A.D. Tyler," said Sophie - Sophie was Rose's new assistant. She was short and plump and had curly red hair that always looked like it was trying to escape her head. "Is there anything I can get for you?"

"Don't reckon this place's got a chippie somewhere?"

Rose offered the other woman her best, friendliest smile, but like all of the other Torchwood execs she'd been introduced to thus far, Sophie didn't quite seem to get it. Instead, she put her finger to her chin and hummed out loud.

"Hmmmm, well, let's see, there's not one in the building, of course, but there's the one on Fifth Street, oh!" Sophie looked excited and held up one perfectly manicured finger. "There's the," Sophie looked both ways, and then said in a very loud whisper, "_Pub._It's in a rather naughty part town but the chips are wonderful! I'll be back in a jiffy, A.D. Tyler - oh, you'll love them!"

Sophie began digging through her bag, looking as though she were ready to set out for the naughty part of town and get Rose chips that instant.

"Sophie, you tart! How would you know where the naughty parts of town are?"

Sophie, who was about Jackie's age, blushed deep crimson.

"Really I'm fine," she said, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture and giving the woman a pat. "You don't have to wait on me hand and foot, Sophie, promise. Pete's not gonna fire you if you don't fetch me naughty chips."

"Oh…oh if you're sure, dear. Ma'am."

"Just Rose. And I'm sure. All I need you to do is take forms and make sure Mum isn't ringin' every five minutes."

"Yes Ma'am."

When the door shut, Rose leaned against it and took a long, measured breath.

"Just Rose," she mumbled.

Save for Sophie most of Torchwood One seemed to be, for now, in favor of leaving her alone. For whatever reason - be it that she was the director's daughter, now, or simply that she was an unknown quantity, Rose was grateful. Her new job - Rose Tyler, Torchwood Requisitions Director - was going to take some getting used to.

Pete's idea, this. It would provide her with clearance, give her a reason to be in the labs underneath Torchwood One without attracting too much attention. He couldn't sanction pet projects, of course, but he could do small things to help - small things like a comfortable office, or extra security clearance, or the massive private funding required for Rose, and Mickey, and a team of hand-picked, highly trained specialists from around the world to build an impossible machine so that Rose could do an impossible thing.

_You can't. _

That voice drifted through the empty room, not so much a memory now, but a sort of anti-mantra, repeated in her head to remind her that the Doctor was sometimes a great big idiot. Hours after his holographic image faded, after the tears burned themselves away, she was left, on the plane ride home from Darlig Ulv Stranden, with a gnawing sense of indignation. How could he say those things to her, tell her she'd never see him again, while she was standing on the proof of the opposite?

Bad Wolf Bay.

_A message to lead myself here. _

For the chance to do the impossible, though, she had to at least put up with the every day. The domestic. She snorted.

Taking a deep breath, she sat down, and, as per Pete's instructions, opened up a computer program and started sorting through requisition forms.

_Just you watch me._

* * *

One mad eugenics experiments with murderous twins, a man who could set fires with his mind, two instances of honest-to-god alien abduction and a four-year-old with miraculous healing powers later, Rose determined that everyone who worked for Torchwood was mad. Sure, they did good work, but their requisition forms read like something out of a Harry Potter book - she was filling orders for things like goat's blood and hydra eggs and an entire warehouse full of so much red wine vinegar, Rose half-wondered if Torchwood One were planning an invasion of Raxacoriofallapatorius.

"You," she said to the silver picture frame. It now held a blurry picture of the Doctor, printed from her phone. "Owe me chips. Lots of 'em. The kind in real newspaper, and I'm not payin' this time, you hear?"

The computer barked angrily at her. She narrowed her eyes at the picture frame, but it just sat there, looking like nothing at all but a picture of the world's most infuriating alien. The old version, even - the trip through the Void had not been kind to her phone, and all she was able to salvage was a pixellated, very drunk Shareen hugging a girl too blurry to identify, and this. Hard-eyed and manic and sad and silly and leather and hugs that smell like engine grease and bananas and linger just a little longer because he was always so scared she'd slip away.

Her fingers brushed the frame.

"Idiot," she murmured, shaking her head as she moved to see to the computer

She only got halfway through an all-staff bulletin on the off-limits Warehouse Four before an alarm began to keen.


	3. Can't Keep From Dragging His Feet

_Even if the Time Lords still reigned, the one She has claimed would still be singular among them for his willful ignorance. If he will not act, then She must. _

The TARDIS was inordinately fond of Martha Jones.

The Doctor was too, of course, but with every beat of both his hearts he resented it. It wasn't her fault that she was clever (oh, so clever - framed in his mind with the wind whipping around them as Shakespeare banished the wicked witches with a borrowed spell) and brave ("We might die." "We might not.") and (generally) stayed put when he told her to. There was no doubt that he cared for her, no doubt about it at all, and that was the problem. His hearts were so full of ghosts at Christmas and I-want-you-safe-my-Doctor and edible ball bearings and how-long-are-you-gonna-stay-with-me that he feared, by making any room for Martha at all, that he would lose something precious.

The TARDIS had no such misgivings. As the two of them climbed aboard, filthy and weary from Hooverville and the Empire State Building and the Daleks (always, always the Daleks), She chimed cheerfully at Martha and instantly illuminated the closest pathway to what the Doctor knew was a small wing of rooms that his sentient time ship had deemed should belong to his newest companion. They were full of plush towels and extravagant soaps and a bed topped with silk and down comforters, and if the TARDIS were feeling particularly kind, a small table bearing any kind of food you could wish for.

He knew these rooms belonged to Martha Jones because they were now etched, at the top corner of the door, with an ornate caduceus, and the Doctor, more often than not, found himself locked out of them. Not Martha's doing - he was beginning to suspect that locking him out of her bedroom was not something that would cross Martha's mind - but his ship's, a protective measure, a shield for Martha's heart.

Because it was becoming quite apparent that Martha's heart was in danger.

Even now, when her life had been threatened by the most fearsome race in the galaxy, when her lovely face was drawn from lack of sleep and she wavered, just a bit on her feet as the TARDIS door clicked shut behind them, she turned, with a soft, tired smile, to him.

"All right then, Doctor?"

No. No, he was not all right. The hum of the last Dalek's emergency temporal shift still crawled along his skin, still sat in his stomach like an iron bar. He tasted their stink on the air, felt it's metallic tang deep in the recesses of his mind. Images of Canary Wharf and Satellite Five and Arcadia swarmed him: his enemy flooding the sky and tearing everything precious into ruin.

His arms held outstretched as he taunted them, begged them just to end it. But of course they hadn't. No Dalek would ever offer mercy to the Doctor.

His heart swelled as he looked at Martha Jones; so brilliant, so caring, so very human. Humanest-human, in the way her hand lingered on his arm a little too long, or the way she tucked her head under his chin when they hugged, or the way her heartbeat ratcheted skywards when he grinned at her. Oh, it hurt, because he adored her. He loved her already; she was precious to him.

"Doctor?"

That adoration would never, ever be what she wanted from him, and what she wanted, he couldn't give. There was nothing he could see, no course of action he could find to stop her heartbreak, so he let the TARDIS pamper her, even though it meant less of Her in his head, too - even though that meant it took Her a full five minutes to even recognize that he was very definitely not all right..

It was the least he could do.

"Oh, me? I'm always all right," he said, giving her a cheeky wink. "Off with you now, Martha Jones! Busy day tomorrow, and you humans need sleep. Best go on and get it out of the way."

Her eyes narrowed. "If you're sure…"

Martha gave him a kiss on the cheek and disappeared into the interior. He barely managed to stumble his way towards a room with a pink door, before collapsing of exhaustion into the bed and letting the soft, girl-ish smell that clung to the bedsheets lure him to sleep

***

Time Lords were such ridiculous creatures.

She had never liked them much, in the way that older siblings often find the younger to be bothersome. Always moving things out of their proper order, causing disasters by their action or inaction and then rudely claiming they'd never done any such thing and leaving Her and Her sisters to clean up the mess. Fiercely territorial, infuriatingly single-minded and stubborn, and with a baffling tendency to suppress their own internal needs to the point of the unhealthy, She sometimes theorized that the first Time Lords may have developed regeneration as a defense against a Time Ship's (perfectly understandable) compulsion to vault their pilots into the vacuum of space.

Now, as she patiently guided Her Time Lord towards his place of rest, it certainly was tempting.

He had not slept since his goodbye to Their Rose, nor taken in much sustenance. In that time he had absorbed massive amounts of radiation, purposefully allowed himself to be attacked by a haemovore, and been subject to the machinations of their most ancient was, in short, falling apart, his mind jumble of desperation, the heartbreak of Martha Jones, and the echoing emptiness of Their Rose's departure - so much so that the disregard for his own life was galling.

She had a scolding in mind for him, but he had to be properly rested for _that._

So instead she led him down the corridors to his lair, and if She happened to put Their Rose's door next to his, well, it was no fault of Hers if he ended up swaddled in a pale pink comforter that smelled of applegrass. It was clear, now that unless things were ordered according to Her devices, he was never going to take the necessary actions. So, gently, She touched the part of his mind with the part of Hers still connected with Their Rose, and he slept, while She quietly piloted Herself out of the Vortex.

There was work to be done.


	4. Bigwigs Love Hitting The Jackpot

Rose didn't have a weapon.

It was part of the standard Torchwood package, of course; there was a slot in her belt for it, right next to the torch and the small pouch of tablets that worked against radiation poisoning. As hard as everyone tried to convince her it was necessary, at the time refusing the sidearm felt like conspiring with the Doctor, even across universes, existing for just a little bit longer in the private world they'd build between themselves.

Now, as a wailing alarm pierced her ears and armed soldiers jogged past her in an orderly line, Rose felt distinctively naked without one. There was no whirr of a sonic screwdriver behind her, no TARDIS to disappear into, no hand to hold. She was no longer part of a team; it was suddenly, starkly aware to her that if she was going to live like the Doctor had lived, she couldn't just think like Rose Tyler any more. She had to think like Rose Tyler and the Doctor in tandem, or else buckle down and carry a gun like everyone else.

Right. Step One. She didn't need a gun; she didn't need a sonic screwdriver. No time for Spock when the domestic approach would do. Taking a deep breath, she cast her eyes around the room, and they settled on poor Sophie, huddled in the corner and casting her eyes around the room fitfully while everyone else hurried about her. Rose sidled over, sticking her hands in her pockets and leaning against Sophie's desk.

"A lot of fuss, eh?"

Rose crossed her arms and leaned, as casually as she could, against Sophie's desk. The other workers in the office were twittering nervously amongst themselves; nobody noticed Rose.

"Oh more'n that, ma'am. They say a prisoner's got loose."

"I didn't know Torchwood kept prisoners."

"Well, they don't normally. Holdin' cells and all that for diplomatic incidents, but we never keep somebody longer'n it'll take to figure out whether or not they want global domination or a stop off for chips."

Lights still flashed in the hallways. The soldiers had long since passed, but most of the office workers around them looked nervous and jittery. Outside this large room full of cubicles Rose could hear the scurrying and low, muffled voices of men talking and the clicks on and off of short-wave radios. The situation was eerily familiar to Rose, and it took a moment to realize why.

"This doesn't look like a diplomatic incident; it looks like a prison break."

Rose had seen dozens of prison breaks. She'd _done _dozens of prison breaks. Only most times she was the prisoner, not the prisonee. The itchy feeling of overexposure, the need to slide behind a pillar or a cubicle wall and make herself as small as possible, now made a little more sense.

"There was this whole big fuss a few days ago," Sophie went on, picking at her curls. "We weren't supposed to know about it, now you see, but Anna down in corrections, she called up here yesterday and said the director'd put in a requisition form for chains and cell wall reinforcements and a whole list of technology of all sorts. I figure they caught that shapeshiftin' thing givin' us trouble a few months back."

Rose lifted her eyebrows.

"This sort of vampire thing; slipped right past our scanners because it drinks blood and turns itself human."

Rose's time at Torchwood had begun with paperwork, had quite a lot of paperwork 'round the middle, and was rapidly approaching old age with paperwork. She had a feeling that it had something to do with Pete wanting to please her mum; she was, at least, not in danger of being executed by alien governments or being possessed by ancient time travel machines. And that wasn't to say it wasn't exciting - there were a lot of plans for the as-of-yet unnamed device, Mickey and Rose up late with half-eaten pizzas and unfinished drawings on the backs of napkins, and half a dozen scientists gawping at her every time she found a way past another hurdle they found impossible. It was gratifying work that brought her a little bit closer to the Doctor every step of the way, but she hadn't done much in the way of actual field work at all.

So when Sophie told her about a blood-sucking alien, she did something that probably wasn't normal.

She grinned.

"All that stuff, do you know where it ended up?"

"Sub-basement, I think. Just underneath the labs. Cold storage." Sophie eyed her like the madness might be infectious; for all Rose knew, it might be. She'd caught hers, after all, from a daft old alien.

"Thanks Sophie, you're a star," Rose said, winking at her. "Back in a tic!"

***

Finding an alien in the middle of an alien warehouse was turning out to be surprisingly challenging. It was nearly half an hour of following armed men down corridors and fluttering her eyelashes (and her last name) at guards before Rose finally found something exciting.

Cold storage, Sophie'd said. And she was right, it _was _colder down here. Her arms were covered in gooseflesh as she tip-toed to the end of the corridor, where there was a row of three big, metal doors that looked like the sort on commercial refrigerators in restaurants. Beyond them she could hear a sort of commotion: things crashing together, boxes maybe, and the sound of scrambling feet and men shouting.

"Oi! What are you doing down here?"

Damn.

"Oh, me?" Rose lifted her eyebrows, doing her best to look good and lost. The man facing her wore a military uniform – not exactly Torchwood standard, that – and was holding a particularly wicked-looking gun. Rose tucked her hands under her arms and squinted at him, putting on an air of relief. "Oh, thank god!" she took a few steps towards him. First day, it's a bit nerve-wrackin', innit? This place is so big. Fraid I've got a bit lost."

"Well," said the guard, looking slightly mollified. "Don't know how you wound up here, of all places. Best keep behind me. There's a foul sort running around here."

She fixed herself behind him, eyes on the huge doors to cold storage. Several times he suggested hide in an adjoining corridor, but she waved the suggestions off; the noises from inside the huge, refrigerated room were growing louder, until finally, all three doors burst open and a figure, huge and intimidating and dressed in black, appeared framed in the middle one. Steam rolled in thick clouds around him, obscuring her view of him; Rose moved closer.

The figure ran into a room off to the side that Rose hadn't noticed before. In the dark she caught a blurry glimpse of black before the door clanged shut, and looked behind her to see if Soldier Boy had caught up. This definitely seemed like a "shoot first, ask questions later" lot, and the creature, whatever it had done, was going to get its one chance. Perhaps, she thought, she could reason with it, find out what it wanted, and work something out peacefully.

Just as she'd placed her hand on the knob, though, a cacophony of shouting to the beat of booted feet assaulted her ears. The doors had opened. Swearing softly underneath her breath, Rose backed into the shadows, watching with wide eyes as the soldier in the lead forced his way into the room.

There was a shot. Before she could cry out in protest, Rose had to throw an arm across her eyes to shield them; a brilliant golden glow flooded the corridor. Then the air was peppered with the harsh staccato of automatic machine gun fire, and the glow receded.

"Rose?"

Pete was standing in front of her, forehead creased with worry. Several men stopped to talk to him, and he gave orders to them in a low voice while Rose craned her neck to try to see inside the room. It seemed to be just an empty office; the soldiers were working together to lift a limp body into a body bag.

"Got your man then," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Might've at least given it a chance to tell you what it wanted."

"He had his chance, and he spent it assaulting my men," Pete Rose, what are you doing all the way down here?"

"Tryin' to find Mickey's floor," she lied. "Got lost."

"Oh, well you've just gone down one floor too far. Mickey's just above us. Why don't you go on up then? That's a good girl."

Pete was often awkward. To the public, he was her father and had been for twenty years – in private, she was a daughter he'd never asked for. Admittedly she hadn't given him much of a chance in the months after Canary Wharf, and didn't really make it much easier now, trading the cold shoulder for being unpredictably enthusiastic at the thought of doing things that put herself in harm's way. There were a lot of times when he didn't quite know how to approach her, just because one response could earn her ire, but another could earn Jackie's, and he liked to avoid both if he could.

Still. 'Good girl' was a bit much for a man who'd been living with at least one Prentice-Tyler woman for the last twenty years.

And Rose?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell your mum I'll be late for dinner. Conferencing with the president again, I'm afraid."

Rose offered him a smile and darted off down the hallway. The smile faded as soon as she was sure Pete couldn't see her. Something was going on.

***

"It was weird, mum, I'm tellin' ya. Something's going on."

Several hours later, Rose was passing boxes of Chinese takeout to Mickey and her mum in the huge, airy kitchen at Pete's estate. It wasn't quite dark out yet, sunlight still spilling in through the huge sliding glass doors that led out to the garden.

"But that's what Torchwood is, innit?" Mickey shoveled another forkful of lo mein into his mouth, taking around it. "I mean, there's always somethin weird going on, s'what you signed up for. Just like on the TARDIS."

"Nobody on the TARDIS ever told me to run along and behave like a good little girl," said Rose. "If he knew what was good for 'im."

Rose rummaged through the bag for her chicken fried rice; the bag seemed heavier than usual. Setting the small white boxes out in a row, she found she'd ordered two helpings and an order of dumplings she'd never eat, because she didn't like them. Mickey gave her a pitying look; she hadn't accidentally ordered food for the Doctor in _ages. _

She pushed the extra food towards her mother, who was just tucking in with a box of rice balanced on her growing belly.

"Oh, now sweetheart, Pete's just trying hard, that's all," she pointed her chopsticks at Rose. "He's not half worried you'll clam up again."

"Mum, I told you -"

"I think he's done right by you," continued Jackie. "The job and the apartment. And you not even his daughter! Wouldn't hurt you to be grateful once in a while. Mind you I had half a mind to burn his ears off myself, lettin' you put yourself up at Torchwood. You still aren't _safe._"

They ate in silence until the sound of the door opening and closing signaled Pete's arrival. It had grown dark out, and Jackie was just finishing up the last of the dumplings when he came in looking rumpled and tired.

"Sorry I'm late, Jacks," said Pete, setting his briefcase down on the floor next to his seat. "President Saxon's such a talkative chap."


End file.
